Laundry treating appliances, such as washing machines, refreshers, and non-aqueous systems, can have a configuration based on a rotating container that defines a treating chamber in which laundry items are placed for treating. A lid covers the treating chamber to keep items from falling in or out of the treating chamber.
While horizontal-axis, front-loading, washing machines commonly have transparent lids to enable viewing of the contents, such is not the case with vertical-axis, top-loading, washing machines. Unlike the front-loading washing machines, top-loading washing machines must pass a ball drop test, and typically, transparent lids, usually made from a single panel of glass, cannot pass the ball drop test without encapsulation of the lid edges. The applicable ball drop test is Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Standard for Polymeric Materials (UL 746C), which contains specifications for the ball drop test requiring a 0.535 kg steel ball with a 50.8 mm diameter to be dropped from 1.29 meters, resulting in an impact of 6.8 Joules, to test the strength of a material.
The encapsulation of the edge of the glass panel leads to manufacturing complexity and a corresponding cost increase, which has prevented transparent lids from being as widely adopted in top loading washing machines as compared to front-loading washing machines.